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AN 



EVANGELICAL MINISTRY, 



SECURITY OF A NATION 



A SERMON, 



PREACHED IN BEHALF OF 



THE AMERICAN HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY, 



Jn the Bleeeker Street Church, New York, 



J A N V A R Y 2 , 18 4 8 



REV. ERSKINE MASON, D. D 

PASTOR OF Tilt; CHURCH. 



PUBLISHED BY BEQUEST. 



NEW YORK: 
PRINTED BY WILLIAM O S B O R N , 

SPRUCE STKEKT, COISXER OF NASSAU. 
1 S 4 3 . ' 



AN 



EVANGELICAL MINISTRY, 



SECURITY OF A NATION 



A SERMON, 



PREACHED IN BEHALF OF 



THE AMERICAN HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY, 



In the Blcccker Street Church, New fork; 



JANUARY 2, 1848 



REV. ERSKINE MASON, D. D 

PASTOR OF THE CHURCH. 



PUBLISHED BY REQUEST 



NEW YORK: 

PRINTED BY WILLIAM OSBORN 

SPRUCE STREET, CORNER OF NASSAU. 

1848. 



<3 Q 



A SEKMON 



BUT THE PEOPLE THAT DO KNOW THEIR GOD SHALL BE STRONG. 

DANIEL, XI. 32. 



If the object of the following discourse, were to illus- 
trate the doctrine of the text, in reference simply to in- 
dividual character, the task before me would be com- 
paratively easy. No proposition, I imagine, admits of 
a demonstration, at once so simple and so perfectly 
conclusive as this — -" The righteous is more excellent 
than his neighbor." It little matters, so far as the 
clearness and completeness of the proof are concerned, 
what may be the points of the instituted comparison 
between them, or in what relations you may choose 
to look at them. You elevate the views of man as an 
individual, raise his tone of feeling and standard of 
character, put him in possession of the elements and 
sources of the purest, and most rational enjoyment, in 
proportion, as you bring him to an intimate, personal 
and practical acquaintance with God. 

As a member of the social compact, the confidence 
of his fellows in him, and*his consequent influence over 
them, will, all other things being equal, correspond in 
degree with his manifested Christianity; while in 
regard to his hopes for the future, the objects which 



they respect, and the foundation upon which they 
rest — the ground of his confidence and dependence — 
no other men will pretend for a moment to compare 
with him — " for their rock is not as our rock, our ene- 
mies themselves being judges." Thus, is every God- 
fearing man in our world, a living illustration, and a 
standing, unanswerable proof of the sentiment of my 
text, that " the people who do know their God shall be 
strong." But if the doctrine of my text, in this relation, 
admits of no dispute, am I treading upon questionable 
ground, when I affirm that the history of nations as 
such, will furnish its no less clear and convincing illus- 
trations 1 What is true of men as individuals, must 
be true of the same men as members of the social com- 
pact. The distinction between organic and individual 
life, if indeed there is any distinction, is certainly too 
transcendental to be used for any practical purpose. 
We can hardly conceive of a community, separate from 
the individuals who compose it, and I shall not be 
called upon to prove, that when individual life ceases 
universally, organic life must be extinct. So we can- 
not separate national character from the character of 
those who go to make up the nation. Paralyze the in- 
dustry of men as individuals, and you dry up the re- 
sources of the community — depress the tone of morals 
universally, and you have a wide-spread scene of na- 
tional degeneracy; and whatever influence predomi- 
nates, so as to regulate the feelings, aims and pursuits 
of men, must determine the organic character of the 
nation to which they belong. 

I am not sure, my brethren, but that we stand upon 
firmer ground, when we assume the advocacy of our 
doctrine in its relation to communities, than when 



we attempt to demonstrate it in its application to indi- 
viduals. It would, I think, be rather difficult to make 
out our case, were it necessary to show that there never 
had been, in a worldly point of view, a well condi- 
tioned, successful, prosperous atheist, or ungodly man. 
True, we might clearly evince, that he owed his pros- 
perity to the very state of society, which he would 
revolutionize if he could, and to the prevalence of prin- 
ciples, the influence of which he does all in his power 
to counteract ; while we could not deny the possibility 
or the reality of such a case. But a nation of atheists, 
a community whose individual members have thrown 
off the restraints of moral obligation, never yet has been 
prosperous, never yet has had even a permanent ex- 
istence. It may have seemed for a moment to have 
risen to splendor, but the very vices which have con- 
tributed to its apparent exaltation, have produced its 
destruction. So that we stand upon the authority of 
facts, as well as of revelation, when we say " The peo- 
ple," and they only, " who do know their God shall be 
strong." 

Upon the strength of this general principle, I appear 
before my hearers to-day, to insist upon the necessity 
of giving permanency and extension to the religious 
influence of our land. I am happy in the assurance, 
that they whom I am called to address do not demand 
of me any lengthened illustration of the principle itself, 
which lies at the foundation of the argument. We 
have read the inspired record, and have found in the 
Jewish commonwealth, a convincing illustration of our 
doctrine. The peculiarities which marked their con- 
dition grew out of their relation to God. Their know- 
ledge of his character, his will and his ways, isolated 



them from all around them, and placed them on a com- 
manding eminence above them. The light which 
made them so conspicuous amid the surrounding dark- 
ness, and the influence which shed such a smiling as- 
pect over their natural as well as moral scenery, came 
from the inner shrine of the tabernacle, where God 
resided. 

The same principle has ever since been receiving its 
illustrations. The unmeasured superiority of Christian 
over unevangelized nations, is universally acknow- 
ledged. Whatever may be men's philosophical opin- 
ions, we are certain there must be a universal agree- 
ment as to the fact, that in all which gives true glory 
to a people, which defines and defends human rights, 
all that tends to promote public prosperity and to secure 
peace and happiness to the families of a land, there is 
no comparison to be instituted, between those who have 
and those who have not, a knowledge of God, as re- 
vealed in his word. We are willing to leave it to the 
most inveterate enemy of the Gospel to say, whether 
the institutions of a professedly Christian country could 
be exchanged for those of the most exalted of other 
lands, without the loss of what we hold most valuable 
in our condition, and the surrender of what gives its 
greatest security to our homes. 

Surely I need not argue to such an audience as the 
present, the point, that in the possession of Christianity 
alone is to be found the reason of the difference be- 
tween ourselves and other nations, whom we have out- 
stripped. Men may talk of the advance which has 
been made in political science and in that of jurispru- 
dence, in every thing in short which tends to give 
fixedness to a country ; but these are only proximate 



causes, which themselves need an explanation, and for 
which, we are driven by necessity to the influence of 
revealed truth. The possession and influence of 
Christianity alone, accounts for the difference between 
ourselves and other nations of ancient and modern 
times. " We have not finer natural powers than they. 
We have not a higher and purer patriotism. We do 
not excel them, in the fire of genius and the vigor of 
intellect; Ffor even now they are our teachers, in the 
melody of verse, and the strictness of reasoning, and 
the mightiness of oratory ; and we would sit at their 
feet when we would learn to be mentally great. We 
are still the pupils of the dead sages of ancient states. 
We light our torches at their inextinguishable lamps ; 
and if we even think of rivalling their literature, we are 
never vain enough to imagine that we surpass it." 

The secret of our prosperity and advancement, is 
found in the influence of divine truth over the mind 
and heart. There is a pervading public sentiment, in- 
spired by the teachings of the sacred oracles, which 
acts as a regulator of the varied forces, which are at 
work in the general system, and which, in proportion 
to its power, keeps the whole machinery steady. 
Whatever influence avarice may have had in peopling 
this land, moral principle, and a deep, strong, effective 
sense of right, as taught in the word of God, gave 
character to its institutions. The influence of our 
forefathers' piety, shaped our course as a nation, and 
was woven into the very texture of our system. We 
feel it to this day, as we enjoy its fruits in the institu- 
tions of education and religion, in our schools, our 
colleges, our sanctuaries, our Sabbaths and our 
preached Gospel. The republics of our southern con- 



8 

tinent were founded by men of another spirit and 
stamp. Vastly superior to our forefathers, in mere na- 
tural advantages of soil and climate, they were vastly 
inferior to them, in every thing which goes to constitute 
true moral greatness ; and the results have varied ac- 
cordingly. Even now, they have borrowed from us 
much that is valuable, in our laws, in our civil and po- 
litical institutions — they have borrowed every thing but 
our religion, and they maintain at best but a sickly 
existence. The heart of the system is unhealthy, and 
irregular in its pulsations, and with all the natural 
elements of progress, there is nothing to secure, or to 
regulate their development. Had our forefathers been 
men of a different stamp, of a less stern morality, and 
less practical deference to the teachings of the word 
of God, they had transmitted to us a like sickly consti- 
tution, a like heritage of ignorance and imbecility. 
Never should we have stood higher than they, in all 
those respects, in which confessedly they are immea- 
surably distanced, had we not been blessed with the 
influence of the enlightened religion of the Bible. 
We can summon then every man, even the greatest 
enemy of religion, as a witness on the side of that 
which he openly denies, and he cannot keep back his 
acknowledgment, that no agency is, to any degree, 
comparable with that of Christianity, when the ends to 
be compassed, are the best interests of man in all his 
relations. 

If the principle I have just laid down is the correct 
one, it seems to follow by necessary consequence, that 
our security as a people, is to be found only in the con- 
tinued and permanent influence of the same principles, 
in which our institutions originated, and which have 
thus far secured our prosperity. Whatever may be 



said of other communities, crushed under the iron hand 
of despotism, too ignorant to understand all their rights, 
and too debased and enervated to assert those which 
are known, we can never flourish without the influence 
of the Gospel. The dangers to which we are exposed, 
grow out of those very peculiarities, which, rightly 
directed and controlled, furnish the brightest promise of 
our increasing greatness. A vast and enlarging terri- 
tory, giving rise as it must to different and conflicting 
interests, requires more than iron bands to prevent it 
from breaking by its own weight. In proportion as you 
enlarge any sphere, and bring into it new and different 
influences, you must increase the great central power 
which binds the whole together, and prevents the diffe- 
rent parts from flying off under the action of their own 
uncontrolled force. The rapidity with which informa- 
tionis diffused — the varied, and generally enjoyed means 
of mental development, are at once the brightest and 
darkest omens in our national firmament. Every thing 
depends upon the direction which educated mind shall 
take, and the ends to which it shall devote its energies. 
" Knowledge is power." An untaught people are 
harmless, for they are too debased to know their 
strength, and can generally be controlled by the in- 
fluence of the enlightened few, or certainly by the 
physical force which those few know well how to apply. 
But an enlightened people are mighty for any thing 
to which they may put their hand — mighty for evil or 
for good, according to the point to which their energies 
may be turned. And whether the means so generally 
employed for raising up an intelligent community, and 
in which we pride ourselves, as constituting one of our 
peculiar glories, are promises of days of increasing 



10 

light, or presages of approaching moral darkness, re- 
mains yet to be determined. 

I am not to be understood as depreciating mental 
culture, or pleading for popular ignorance as furnish- 
ing a characteristic of the best type of society, when I say 
that our system of public education is as yet an experi- 
ment, for the results of which our best and wisest men 
are looking with the most trembling anxiety. Educa- 
tion is a good, the diffusion of knowledge is a good ; 
we would not set a limit to the one, nor raise any 
barriers or checks to the other. And so is a vigorous 
constitution a blessing, and so likewise is muscular 
strength ; but a man had better be a puny, sickly 
thing, than a being of wondrous powers, devoting all 
his strength to perpetrate acts of violence and crime. 
And a man had better be ignorant, than know only how 
to be wicked — better remain untaught, than be edu- 
cated for purposes of iniquity. Our popular systems 
of mental discipline, (I need not prove it to any of my 
hearers,) provide only for the culture of intellect and 
the attainment of knowledge, but furnish no security 
for the right direction of the powers which they nourish 
into strength, nor for the right use of the knowledge 
they are designed to impart. They are as perfect illus- 
trations, as could well be imagined, of the entire divorce- 
ment of mental from moral training— preparing men for 
action, without determining the nature of that action — 
gifting them with great energies, and yet leaving their 
application wholly an uncertainty. It is thus the fear- 
fully hazardous experiment is going on, of communi- 
cating power without the disposition to use it rightly — 
running the risk of making men fools in attempting to 
make them wise-— elevating them, without giving them 



11 

what can alone prevent them from becoming giddy at 
their height ; and in view of the well known tendencies 
of human nature, it seems to be, not only preparing 
the way for evil, but like giving the strength of a giant 
to the sinews and muscles of wickedness. In short, 
education without moral influence, while it can be 
looked upon as the offspring only of infidelity, can be 
regarded as the parent only of anarchy. 

I do not know of any way but one, in which we can 
convert these omens of evil, into harbingers and means 
of good. In view of our national peculiarities, and the 
state of public sentiment which prevails, I do not see 
how we can infuse a decidedly Christian sentiment into 
any of our legally established systems of education. 
The most that we can do, or as I imagine, should at- 
tempt to do, (and the thought is by the way worthy of 
the attention of every right-thinking Christian man,) is 
to keep these sources of influence away from the con- 
trol of those who would poison them ; and if we cannot 
infuse into the fountains whence our youth are drinking, 
the salt of Christian truth, we ought at least carefully 
to watch them, and prevent their being polluted by the 
foreign dangerous admixtures of infidelity and error. 

We need, however, and must have, something more 
than prevention. Human nature is not in that vigorous 
and healthy state which requires only care to avoid 
evil, but it is actually diseased, and demands positive 
remedial agents to effect a cure, or at least to check 
the progress of the malady. The salt of the earth is 
the religion of the Bible. The only safeguard of all 
we hold dear — our comforts for time and our prospects 
for eternity — is found in the diffusion of evangelical in- 
fluence. There must be some provision made for 



12 

throwing a controlling power over human passions, 
which a thousand circumstances combine to inflame, 
and for giving a right direction to those energies, which 
we are nourishing into giant strength. The pride, and 
ambition, and covetousness, and sensuality of man, 
must be brought under the restraining power of the 
Eternal throne. The " Sampson of infuriate lust" will 
break asunder, with perfect ease, all cords but those with 
which Almighty God alone can bind it ; and over the 
scene which these mighty passions are describing, must 
evangelical truth shed down its precious influence — the 
only effectual check to their working — the only security 
against their dreaded result. 

It seems to me, however, a work of supererrogation 
to argue this point before Christians ; or before men, 
who, though they may not be Christians themselves, 
yet can feel the indirect influence of Christianity, and 
can trace all their present earthly blessings, and all 
their favorable, spiritual circumstances, to their source 
in the religion of their forefathers. Assuming then this 
point as granted, we turn our attention to the inquiry — 
the great practical inquiry after all — How are we to 
provide for the extension of religious principle, and 
secure the permanent ascendency and control of reli- 
gious influence 1 

In agitating this question, I would not under- 
rate any agencies, wisely constructed and plied for 
bringing the mind of our population in to contact with 
religious truth. But while each one is important in its 
sphere, and may be indispensable in view of the imme- 
diate end it contemplates, we must fall back upon the 
stated ministry of the truth, as the prime and most effec- 
tive agency, and the one which in reality gives value 



13 

and efficiency to all the rest. Every part in a watch, 
is essential to the perfectness of the whole. You must 
have all of them to constitute the time-piece entire, and 
faithfully to indicate the movements of the hours ; but 
if the main-spring is not there, the rest are useless. 
And what that main-spring is to the movements of a 
watch, is the regular, stated ministry of the word to all 
the religious movements of the age. 

It is a truism, almost, to say, that God's appoint- 
ments are the wisest and the best. And when I read 
that he has " ordained by the foolishness of preaching 
to save them that believe ;" when I find, that he has 
thus made the pulpit a central point of light and moral 
power — selected it as his special agency to throw the 
influence of his truth over the minds of men, I know 
that it cannot be dispensed with. I could not bring 
myself to put such an affront upon God, as to give any 
other instrumentality the precedence. Mighty as is the 
power of the press — and that power is felt from one end 
of our land to the other — it is not the power of the pul- 
pit ; nay, in a religious point of view, the latter gives its 
influence to the former. Bibles, and books, though 
multiplied a hundred fold, and scattered with assidu- 
ous industry over the whole length and breadth of our 
land — Bibles without preachers — would be, to a lamen- 
table extent, Bibles without readers. Nay, all other 
agencies of whatever kind for the diffusion of religious 
truth, owe their very existence to a stated ministry, and 
would no longer be effective, or even be put forth, 
were the prophets to cease out of the land ; and the 
arrest which would at once be put upon the pro- 
pagation of divine knowledge, in the event of the 
closing of our churches and the silencing of our minis- 



14 

ters, would furnish a most striking illustration of the 
truth, that "the foolishness of God is wiser than men, 
and the weakness of God is stronger than men." 

Joyfully do we hail every effort that is made to rescue 
man from ignorance and degradation. The varied in- 
fluences which are at work to stem and turn back 
the current of vice and infidelity — which, unchecked, 
would bear down all things, a wreck upon its foaming 
and boiling waters — are our signs of promise, and our 
warrants for hope. But, the ministry of the truth — 
that, after all, is the great palladium of safety ; and when 1 
look upon our wide spread valleys and scattered villages, 
teeming with a busy population, I cannot rejoice, unless 
I know that the Church is there, and the Sabbath is 
there ; and whatever be the means of improvement 
they may enjoy, we cannot depend upon them, unless 
we see the spire pointing heavenward ; for that, and 
that alone, indicates a centre of civilization, whence 
humanizing influences go out to our fellow men — a 
focus, whence diverge the rays of a moral illumina- 
tion, lighting up the darkness, showing men the path 
of earthly peace, and leading the wanderer to the only 
refuge for the sinner and the lost. 

If we were to confine our attention to the simple 
inculcation of divine truth in the sanctuary, which is 
after all, the peculiar work of the ministry, we should 
have enough to justify all the remarks we have made. 
But we must not overlook the fact, that around the 
Church and its ordinances, cluster, as round their 
life-giving centre, their living heart, all those in- 
stitutions which ennoble man and shed a beauty upon 
society. Our forefathers were as marked for their 
practical wisdom, as for their implicit deference to the 



15 

will of God. In their organizations, provision was 
first made for the preaching of the Gospel, and from 
their well ordered churches, came, as off-shoots, all their 
institutions of learning and benevolence. The latter 
never could have been originated without the former; 
they cannot now, without them — if they live at all — main- 
tain any but a sickly existence. But I care not where 
you go, nor what the character of the population of any 
given spot, if you can but plant a church, with its re- 
gular ministry in the midst of them. There may be no 
great outward demonstration, but there will certainly 
spring up there a school, and one by one, the varied 
means of culture and improvement ; and when, after 
a while, you visit the scene, you will find a wonderful 
change ; the physical aspect of nature itself will seem 
improved, to be in keeping with the great moral revo- 
lution which has been effected ; you will see a well 
ordered community ; and as you look at the intelli- 
gent and well directed and effective industry around 
you, and see the domestic beauty which sheds its 
blandishments over households, you can have but 
feeble pretensions to the name even of a philosopher, 
if you do not associate all the marks of improvement 
and progress, with the songs which have been ' sung, 
the prayers which have been offered, and the truth 
which has been preached in the sanctuary. 

The power of an enlightened and sanctified ministry, 
has been too fully acknowledged in every age of the 
world, to allow us to look upon it as a problem remaining 
yet to be solved. Friends and foes have alike given their 
testimony, and that of the latter has been none the 
less powerful, because indirectly given, or reluctantly 
wrung from them. Around such a ministry, the men 



16 

who fear God and love righteousness have gathered, 
as though all then* hopes of good were identified with 
its maintenance ; while men of a different spirit and 
opposite tendencies, have made it the objects of their 
first and strongest attacks, as though it stood in the 
way — the most formidable barrier to the prosecution of 
their unhallowed schemes. No man can write the his- 
tory of our own, or any other evangelized country, 
without bringing in the influence of the Church and 
a preached Gospel, as identified with all that has been 
bright and blessed ; and the dark pages of the volume, 
presenting nothing upon which the eye can love to look, 
show the absence of evangelical power, because it tells 
of vacant pulpits, and a paralyzed ministry. The glory 
of our own New England emanates from her churches, 
and the institutions to which those churches have given 
birth, and which they now sustain ; and as we feel 
that he who should tear down her turrets and her 
spires, and desolate her sanctuaries, would be the 
enemy of all she holds dear, we have in that very 
feeling a demonstration, stronger than any logic could 
furnish, of the mighty, conservative power of a stated 
ministry. 

Then, on the other hand, it is a fact of no doubtful 
significance, that the enemies of the public good have 
always been most bitter in then* opposition to a preached 
Gospel. The persons of the priests had never been 
incarcerated, nor would their blood ever have flowed 
upon scaffolds, in the dark days, when human passions 
revelled amid the ruins which their unrestrained and 
unhallowed excitement had produced, had not their in- 
fluence been supposed at least, to interfere with the 
hellish rites which unbridled lust was practising, and 



17 

the sacrifices which it demanded for its polluted altar. 
And who does not know, as he looks abroad over our 
own land, at the present moment, that men of visionary 
views, and evil designings, find in an enlightened minis- 
try of the oracles of God, the greatest hinderance to the 
prosecution of their plans. Men who inveigh against 
the established order of society, who would break up 
foundations, and put things to rights, by reconstructing 
society upon new principles — men, upon whom won- 
drous light has been breaking in these latter days, who 
have discovered truth which our fathers never knew, 
and which Jesus Christ was not competent to reveal, 
do not hesitate to avow their opposition to the Church 
of God, and all the institutions to which it gives birth, 
as the only formidable obstacles to the successful prose- 
cution of their destructive and Utopian schemes. The 
political demagogue, who feels that he must muzzle 
the pulpit before he can accomplish his purposes— the 
raving fanatic who must overthrow the church and its 
ministry, before he can overthrow the laws and govern- 
ment of his country — the infidel statesman who 
pointed to the spire of a village church as a public 
nuisance, because but for it he might gain currency for 
his liberalizing views — all give their testimony to the 
conservative power of a preached Gospel. Nay, more, if 
they were honest, they would confess that to the in- 
fluence of the Church of Christ and of the principles 
inculcated in these public nuisances of our land, they 
owe their personal safety, while they are promulgating 
their disorganizing views, and endeavoriug to compass 
their disorganizing plans. They are right ; they must 
prostrate the sanctuary, before they can succeed. 
Neither is history silent nor observation blind to the 

2 



18 

results which follow from a dearth of sanctuary in- 
fluence. Where the priests' lips are silenced, or cease to 
keep knowledge, where there is no ministry, or an ig- 
norant and unsanctified one, the scene is any thing but 
pleasant to look upon. You do not expect to find there 
the elements of success, the marks of industry and 
thrift, nor any of those virtues which shed a beauty 
over the domestic circle, and give its greatest orna- 
ments to society. Not to say any thing of lands lying 
in moral darkness, we point you to others. The 
famous act of uniformity, by the operation of which two 
thousand of England's most enlightened and effective 
ministers were silenced, or at least shut out from the public 
exercise of their office, was followed, and that very 
speedily, by a great and most manifest deterioration of 
public morals, and diminution of the securities of person- 
al safety. In our own land, the scenes of lawlessness 
and crime which make us often tremble, are enacted far 
away from the sound of the church-going bell, among 
those who have left our older communities and have 
pressed onward to our distant forests, carrying with them 
all the passions of unsanctified humanity, and leaving 
behind them the only influences which can hold them 
in check. There are, I admit, exceptions to the re- 
mark, but they do not affect the truth of our general 
statement, those exceptions themselves furnishing illus- 
trations of the power of sanctified influence from the 
consequences of its absence. 

It is in view of these general thoughts, that I put in 
my plea for a regular ministry, and for a hearty co- 
operation in all those efforts, which contemplate as their 
object, the giving of this ministry to every portion of 
our land. We look upon the movements of this nation 



19 

with peculiar anxiety; and borrow light from the history 
of the past, to throw upon the darkness of the future* 
The wonderful elements of progress which belong to 
us, and the indomitable spirit of enterprise which marks 
our people — exciting as they do the astonishment of the 
beholder— predict some wonderful destiny. The cha- 
racter of that destiny is dependent upon the event of re- 
ligious influence keeping pace with our civil and 
political advancement. The scene of our action is con- 
tinually widening ; our people are going farther and far- 
ther on, and the waters, which but yesterday were 
only rippled by the movement of the light canoe, are 
now ploughed by the freighted vessel ; and where are 
now smiling villages and the busy hum of industry, but 
yesterday was heard nothing but the echo of the wood- 
man's axe. The animating spirit of this wondrous 
movement, is mainly a lust for power, or a lust for 
wealth ; and unless the influence of an enlightened min- 
istry goes along with our people, we must look very 
shortly for precisely such a state of things, as these un- 
restrained passions may develope. If you can imagine 
what would be shortly the result here, were our sanc- 
tuaries all closed, and our Sabbaths all forgotten, you 
can easily imagine what must be the result in the 
coming history of our country, if the influence of a 
preached Gospel does not keep pace with the other 
movements of our people. 

If there are signs of evil, and omens of coming ca- 
tastrophe — and wise men and good men see them con- 
tinually increasing in numbers and magnitude — they 
are neither reasons for unconcern, on the one hand, nor 
warrants for despondency on the other. The distant 
mutterings of the thunder storm bid us flee to our shel- 



20 

ter, and look well to our conductors; and the signs 
which appear in our political horizon charge us to be 
active, in preparations to meet the storm, and to arrest 
and scatter the destructive fluid. We have our secu- 
rity, and our only security, and our sufficient security, 
in the influence of an educated ministry. 

If the history of the past presents us with startling 
predictions, as to our rapid growth for the future, it 
teaches also, how we may effectually provide against 
those emergencies which we have reason to dread. 
But a short time since, within the recollection perhaps 
of some who hear me, our own State has been densely 
populated. Fears were indulged, and predictions of 
evil were uttered ; but by means of the same instru- 
mentality which to-day I advocate, we have shed over 
the scene the influence of a preached Gospel, and those 
predictions have been falsified, and those fears have 
proved unfounded. And when you cast your eye 
abroad over your own State, and see every where its 
thriving, and intelligent, and orderly population ; as you 
see its churches every where gathering our people with- 
in their walls, Sabbath after Sabbath, and feel that the 
crisis with us is past, and that we are safe ; I beg you 
to remember that we are indebted for this happy re- 
sult, to " Home Missionary" operations, whose claims 
I plead before you to-day. A faithful agent is not on 
fight grounds to be thrown aside ; a well-tried, effective 
instrumentality, is not to be displaced to make room 
for untried, doubtful experiments. We would stand by 
this agency, and plead for it as for the life and salva- 
tion of our country. We wish to send the Sabbath, 
with the Church and its appointed ministry, wherever 
our people have gone. Let us compass this result, and 
we will not fear. Tell me what you may of our ex- 



21 

posure ; magnify and multiply as you please the evi 1 
influences which are at work; unravel the dark 
schemings of infidelity, and error, in all its Protean 
forms ; talk of the designs of foreign ambition, and 
the mighty agencies of a foreign spiritual despotism — 
and what of them all 1 Their name may be legion, 
and their array may terrify the timid and the nervous ; 
but give us this one thing, the influence of an en- 
lightened and sanctified, stated ministry, co-extensive 
with our population, and the result is certain. Noth- 
ing can make headway against such an agency. Error 
can thrive and do its work, superstition can gather up 
its victims and throw overthemits chains, only where that 
ignorance prevails, which the light of this agency scat- 
ters. Anarchy cannot rear its unsightly head under 
the eaves of the sanctuary, nor vice show its unblushing 
countenance in the broad sun-light of the Gospel. 
Wherever men go, let the truth go with them. Let 
sanctified energy rear a church and establish its ordi- 
nances, wherever worldly enterprise gathers a commu- 
nity and rears a village, and who can doubt that our 
interests are safe, and that our destiny will be glorious, 
as our energies are irrepressible. 

At this very moment, we are feeling the influence and 
reaping the fruits of this effort. The one thousand 
educated ministers, which this Institution, through your 
suffrages, sustains on their varied fields of labor, are not 
toiling for nothing. We should perhaps better appre- 
ciate their value, and understand the effects of their 
doings, should their toils all at once be suspended. 
And if we could well sustain them, and make to their 
number daily those additions, which constantly increas- 
ing necessities and an enlarging sphere of labor de- 
mand, we should be satisfied, that as we were depend- 



22 

ing upon God's own agency for good, we should not 
fail of the blessing which would result from the honor 
which God puts upon his appointed instrumentality. 
We are living, my brethren, now, not for ourselves 
alone. The plans which we adopt, and the efforts we 
put forth, are to tell upon those who shall come after 
us, and upon the world at large. Of the fruit of the 
trees which we are planting, our children are to eat ; 
and that fruit will be bitter or sweet, according to the 
seed we may sow, and the culture we may give it. Our 
fathers have handed down to us a fertile and joyous 
land, and privileges inestimable, and means to pre- 
serve and perpetuate them. We feel that they have 
done their part, and have left for our imitation an 
example of faithfulness to those who shall come after 
us. We owe a debt to our ancestry, equalled in mag- 
nitude only by that which we owe to posterity. God, 
too, has done great things for us, whereof we are glad. 
Our heritage is a goodly heritage. But it is with na- 
tions as with individuals, the nature of the blessings 
conferred, no less distinctly intimates the nature 
of the obligation imposed, than does the magni- 
tude of those blessings its weight. We have, as a 
people, a mission to execute. Would to God, that we 
might not mistake it. The period, and the circum- 
stances in which this land was discovered, the events 
which led to its settlement, the character of the men 
who first planted our soil, the institutions which they 
gave us, seem not only to indicate that God has great 
purposes to execute through us, but to intimate also 
the nature of his design. Our mission, is not a mission 
of carnage, and conquest, and blood. For such an 
errand we are wholly unfitted ; there is nothing in the 
genius of our land to qualify, but much to unfit us for 



23 

such a work. There have been men, whom God seerm 
to have flung into the world to curse it ; there have 
been nations, whom God seems to have raised up to 
execute his vengeful and inscrutable purposes ; and 
they have risen upon others' ruin, and triumphed in 
others' woe. But such an errand is not ours, the exe- 
cution of such a commission would be fatal to none 
more than to ourselves. The power of this nation is to be 
felt by the world, but in another way, and in other 
forms. It is by the moral influence of free institutions, 
and an enlightened people, that we are to execute our 
design. If we can judge of the intention of Provi- 
dence, from its arrangements and the agencies which 
it rears, we cannot doubt that we are connected inti- 
mately with the execution of God's purposes of mercy 
in our world ; for never have any people been placed in 
circumstances so well calculated to illustrate the value 
of Christian principle, and the mighty power of an un- 
tramelled Gospel. Already is our history beginning to 
teach the nations lessons which they have never be- 
fore learned. The importance of man, as an indivi- 
dual, in distinction from the importance of men in 
masses, is the great truth which our institutions illus- 
trate — the great principle, which fully carried out, is to 
revolutionize the globe. But that principle can never 
be seen as a true and a safe one, except as the influence 
of the Gospel prevents its perversions and defines its 
proper limitations. Hence the importance, not only to 
ourselves, but to the nations generally, and to the 
kingdom of Christ, of a general prevalence of Gospel 
influence through our country. It is a fact of no little 
interest, that the destinies of the world are, at this mo- 
ment, in the hands of the two nations where this great 
principle is carried out, under the restrictions and 



24 

direction of the Gospel of Christ. The hopes of 
unborn generations in every part of our earth, their 
hopes for time, and their hopes for eternity, hang upon 
England and America. Every where, from the rising 
to the setting sun, is their influence felt. The agita- 
tions and heavings, which are every where distinctly 
visible, are the results of a motion communicated by 
ourselves. The power we are exerting is every day 
becoming greater, and more manifest in its effects, as 
our strength is increased, and our resources are de- 
veloped. What the world shall be, ere the present cen- 
tury shall have completed its cycle, depends very much 
upon what we shall be ; and what we shall be, depends 
upon the suspension, or extension of gospel influence. 
We are acting, therefore, now, not for ourselves alone, 
nor yet for our own immediate posterity, but for 
the world, and for the general interest of the Re- 
deemer's kingdom. If we act well our part, all is 
safe; but if not, all is lost. It is, therefore, not 
Christianity alone, but patriotism and philanthropy, 
which summon us to the work of disseminating the 
knowledge of God and of his grace. If we fail in our 
mission, the secret of our decline, will be found in our 
neglect of him, who raised us to greatness, to make us 
the instrument of good. And whatever causes men 
may propose, as an explanation of our downfal from the 
summit of privilege, they will be the sound reasoners, 
who refer the decline of our strength to the decline 
of our Christianity ; and who point to our text, as ex- 
plaining the change, maintaining that we had never 
been reduced to subjection and vassalage, but through 
a forgetfulness of what is written in the Bible — " The 
people who do know their God shall be strong." 

We ask your help to-day, to prevent so dire a 
catastrophe. 



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